The Asian Law Program

The UW School of Law has long been internationally
recognized as the leading research and instructional center for
the comparative study of East Asian and U.S. law. The School's
Asian Law Program, established in 1962, brings together foreign
legal professionals from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand,
Indonesia, among other Asian countries, and highly qualified
American and other non-Asian students who have competency in an
East Asian language. Through contact and cooperation in this
program, participants gain a valuable reciprocal learning
experience and conduct cutting-edge research on topics of
critical importance in the Pacific Rim.

The program offers advanced, intensive instruction and
research opportunities for those who intend to pursue a career
in trans-Pacific legal affairs. The program today comprises a
major research effort with a graduate degree program offering
both Ph.D. and master of laws (LL.M.) degrees in Asian Law, as
well as a concurrent J.D.-LL.M. degree opportunity and a
concentration track in the J.D. program. The program is
directed by John Haley. In addition to Haley, participating
faculty include Daniel H. Foote (Japanese law), Donald C.
Clarke (Chinese law), Linda S. Hume (International and
comparative commercial law), Richard O. Kummert (U.S.-Japan
corporate law), Toshiko Takenaka (Comparative intellectual
property), and Paul Liu (Comparative intellectual
property).

The program was initiated in 1962 under the leadership of
director Dan Fenno Henderson with support from two substantial
grants from the Ford Foundation. The initial funding for the
program reflected the efforts of several members of the
faculty, notably Ralph W. Johnson, Cornelius J. Peck, and Arval
A. Morris, with strong support by then Dean Lehan K. Tunks.

During the initial years of the program, faculty in the
program focused on research and publication; but in 1967, the
faculty initiated the first instructional program ever
attempted for the advanced education and training of legal
professionals in comparative Asian and American law.

Haley, who is the Garvey, Schubert & Barer Professor of
Law and is also professor of international studies, joined the
faculty in 1974. At that time, Henderson and Haley were the
only full-time members of any law faculty outside of Japan with
a primary research and instructional interest in Japanese law.
As such, they were at the forefront of a new trend: today, over
a dozen American law schools and at least half that many law
faculties in other English-speaking countries have at least one
full-time faculty member with Japanese language ability and an
established research interest in Japanese law.

From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, the Asian Law program
continued to expand. A grant from the Dana Foundation funded
the Dana Fellows Program that brought to the program several
outstanding American lawyers as well as the first students from
the People's Republic of China. An American Bar Association
fellowship, funded by the Japan-United States Friendship
Commission, enabled the program to attract American lawyers
with competence in Japanese language to pursue the LL.M.
degree.

As a result of a special initiative to the Washington State
Legislature in 1987 to enhance the UW's activities in
international studies, the Asian Law Program expanded further.
Provost George M. Beckmann established a new faculty line for
Chinese law, which was filled by Donald C. Clarke in 1988. The
same year, as a result of support from Beckmann and the law
school dean, John R. Price, a third Japanese specialist, Daniel
H. Foote, was appointed to the faculty.

To support the research and teaching activities of the
program, a major effort was launched to develop the already
significant library holdings on Japanese law and to expand its
Chinese and Korean collections. By the end of the program's
first decade, the UW's law library had already become the
leading research library for Japanese law in the U.S.

Main reading room of the UW
Gallagher Law Library

Today, the Gallagher Law Library at the UW houses one of the
largest and most up-to-date collections of Japanese legal
materials in the U.S., with significant and ever-expanding
collections of Chinese and Korean law. With support of the
Weyerhaeuser Foundation, the library also developed one of the
nation's leading collections of Indonesian law.

In addition to its educational mission, an important goal of
the program is to foster important research on major topics of
Asian and comparative law, and to facilitate the publication of
that research. In 1968, the program took over responsibility
for the editorial and business offices of Law in Japan, An
Annual, a publication of the Japanese American Society for
Legal Studies. A decade later, the American business and
editorial offices of The Korean Journal of Comparative
Law were added.

In 1963, the program began a series of five symposia
published by the Washington Law Review: Japanese-U.S.
Business Transactions, U.S.-Japanese Investment Transactions, a
Philippine Law Symposium, U.S.-Japanese Trade Law, and a
symposium on the Japanese Constitution. From 1963 through 1968,
over 40 articles and a total of 1,255 pages of research on
Japanese and Philippine law were published in the Review.

During the program's first decade, in partnership with the
University of Washington Press, the Asian Law Series was
established. The thirteenth volume in that series was published
in 1996, and two additional volumes were in press at the time
of this writing.

The Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, established
at the UW in 1991, is a student-edited law review. The
publication quickly gained international reputation as one of
the leading international and comparative law reviews. Its
publication in 1995 of two symposia--one on competition and
trade policy, the other on capital markets and securities
regulation in the Pacific Rim--focused international
attention on the Journal and on the UW Asian Law
Program.

In 1977, in cooperation with the Washington State Supreme
Court, the UW Asian Law Program initiated a special research
and training opportunity for mid-career Japanese judges. That
activity led to the creation in 1983 of similar programs for
judges and prosecutors from South Korea and most recently, for
prosecutors from Japan. Since 1977, a total of 19 Japanese
judges, 21 Korean judges, 24 Korean prosecutors, and 3 Japanese
prosecutors have spent up to a year at the UW law school.

As of August 1996, there are some 300 graduates of the UW
Asian Law Program, with a distribution by country as follows:
Australia (3), Japan (163), China (17), France (1), Germany
(3), Hong Kong (1), Indonesia (14), Korea (33), Macao (1),
Singapore (1), Taiwan (45), Thailand (2) and the U.S. (53).
Most graduates are engaged in practice in law firms and
corporate legal departments; some have become the directors of
East Asian law centers in Australia, Canada, and the U.S. as
well as scholars in over a dozen law faculties throughout the
Pacific Rim.

In 1996, a professorship in East Asian Law was established
by means of alumni donations and named in honor of Dan Fenno
Henderson. The professorship was inaugurated with Dan Foote as
the first Henderson Professor of East Asian Law at the
University of Washington.